Reno Backs Elian's Dad, Setting Up Showdown In Miami

However, The Attorney General Dropped The Friday Deadline For The Boy's Return And May Let The Dispute Play Out In Federal Court.

January 13, 2000|By Maya Bell, Miami Bureau

MIAMI - Attorney General Janet Reno on Wednesday upheld a decision to send Elian Gonzalez back to his father in Cuba, setting the stage for a showdown in federal court over the boy's future.

Lawyers representing the boy's Miami relatives immediately vowed to file suit next week in U.S. District Court in Miami demanding that Elian's request for political asylum be heard.

``International law recognizes that you don't return a person with a well-founded fear of persecution to another country - particularly a child who is as vulnerable and as traumatized as Elian,'' said Miami lawyer Roger Bernstein.

Reno disagreed, repeating what numerous experts have said after the boy's mother drowned while trying to bring him to the United States in November: Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, has the sole legal authority to speak for his son. And because Gonzalez has withdrawn the boy's request for asylum, the child is not entitled to a hearing.

``It's like we're climbing up a staircase,'' said Delfin Gonzalez, a great-uncle of Elian's. ``We might climb one step up, and then we're sent two steps down. But I can tell you we're not going back to the ground level.''

The attorney general, a Miami native well aware of the passionate feelings this case has wrought, added that the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service would extend its Friday deadline for returning Elian to his father ``to accommodate any federal court proceedings.''

Some legal experts predicted U.S. officials will allow the issue to play out in court as long as necessary to show that Elian's Miami relatives will get due process before the boy is returned.

``The federal strategy appears to be to win in federal court and then hope the family helps the boy get home,'' said Alex Aleinikoff, former general counsel for INS and now law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. ``I don't think you'll see federal marshals forcibly removing him from the Florida home. That would raise issues of civil peace.''

Miami's exile leaders, who last week reacted to the INS decision to send Elian to Cuba by organizing traffic blockades and other acts of civil disobedience, said Wednesday that they were on standby as legal proceedings took their course. They have said they would respect a judge's decision to send the boy home - as long as Elian had his day in court.

They appeared to get that day in court when a Miami-Dade family judge on Monday granted temporary custody of Elian to his paternal great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, and set a custody hearing for March 6. A mechanic who came from Cuba in 1980, Lazaro Gonzalez has been caring for Elian since he was found on an inner tube off the coast of Fort Lauderdale on Thanksgiving Day.

But Reno, in a letter to Bernstein and two other lawyers pursuing asylum for Elian, said Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Rosa Rodriguez's order has ``no force or effect'' on the INS.

Nothing in Rodriquez's decision changes the government's decision to send the boy home to his father, Reno said.

There was no immediate reaction to Reno's statement in Cuba, where Havana continued reaching out to Americans who support Elian's return.

The Communist Party daily Granma reprinted a statement issued this week by the U.S. National Council of Churches urging the boy's quick repatriation.

``Little Elian deserves to be reunited immediately with his biological father and closest family members in Cuba,'' Robert Edgar, the church council's secretary general, said in a statement translated into Spanish for Cuban readers. ``The longer this whole process drags on, the more disconnected this small child becomes from those who have raised him and who love him.''

Like almost everyone in Cuba, a majority of Americans thinks the boy should be sent home to his father, according to a new CNN-USA Today-Gallup Poll.

According to the poll, 56 percent of Americans agree with the INS decision to send him home. Thirty-six percent think he should remain in the United States.

The church council became involved in the battle at the invitation of Cuba's National Council of Churches, which represents the mainline Protestant denominations on the island.

Edgar's predecessor visited Cuba earlier this month and met with the boy's father and grandparents, as well as Cuban President Fidel Castro.